Security vendor Malwarebytes has crippled thousands of computers around the world after a faulty update was applied to its software. The faulty security update applied to the software marked legitimate system files as malware code.

"Within eight minutes, the update was pulled from our servers. Immediately thereafter, users flocked to our support helpdesk and forums to ask us for a fix."

The specific operating system files that the malware update targeted included Windows.dll and.exe files. By targeting those files, the security application prevented them from running, taking IT systems and individual computers off-line.

One company that uses a software claims that the update knocked 80% of its servers off-line. Malwarebytes maintains that it has begun reworking its update policy to ensure the sort of mistake never happens again.

"We acted over-zealously in that mission and realise far superior procedures around updating are needed. More was expected of us, and we failed," wrote Kleczynski.

"We are commissioning several new resources to stop this from happening again. We are building more redundancy to check our researchers' work and improving our peer review."

my brother added this to his computer to get rid of my search conduit about a week ago, they flagged two files and he erased them but the computer seems fine. Should he worry or uninstall malware antivirus protection?